The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-07-09
COLONEL PAT DOMAIN.
His Prophetic Letter on Interstate
 Commerce.
CHICAGO. July 1, 1887

CHICAGO, July 1, 1887.
 The appended article on the inter- state commerce bill was written just after congress adjourned ill March, and was offered to two of Chicago's daily papers. Both, after grave con sultations of editors and managers, de- clined to publish it: one of them on the ground that it had supported the bill from the start, and believed it just the thing the whole country was aching for, and to permit so vehement an attack on the righteous measure to appear i'll its columns would seem in- consistent, if not self-stultifying. Be- sides, the paper was rigid high tariff paper, and this gentle review of con- gressional madness squinted treasona- bly toward tariff reform. The other paper put its declination of the article on other grounds equally satisfactory.
 The article appeared in the New York Herdid of March 3, and aroused so much comment that the HerdM followed it the next day with two columns of editorial comments, and interviews with such men as Albert Fink. It was widely copied through out the United States, the National Steamship and Rotir0y Gazette issu- ing a special edition of it for distribu- tion among all railway attorneys and general managers in America.
 Three months experience of the in- sane and iniquitous measure has justi- fled every sentence and sentiment of the scathing arraignment and denun- citation, and Colonel Donan declares his prophecies have been in part full filled long before he expected they have been bedeviled, every business interest has been interfered with, the booms of the west and south have J been checked, many lines of trade have been almost cut off, and nobody has been benefited sufficiently to offset even fraction of the general damage. Cullom is deader than last years smoked herring, and old Reagan, if he lived anywhere else but in Texas, would have kept the Illinois con- merce- paralyzer company in deadness. Every country paper in the Union owes them debt of execration that "Aii dooulCutN UC phlu WILL lIcdN interest. Scores of the papers that joined ill the idiotic clamor in favor of the bill, are now bawling for an extra session of congress to repeal it.
 Here is Colonel Donan's article against the bill. as it appeared in the New York Hesad of March 23:
 A more worthless and infamous con- gress than that which has just ad- journed has, in my opinion, never been known in the history of our mob governed republic. Its whole record may be condensed iB three words: Imbecility, Folly, Knavery. Where it was not despicable, it was villain ous; when it was not criminal, it was asinine. It left undone the things it ought to have done, and did the things 1t ought not to have done; and alto gether earned, and justly merits, the universal execration it has received.
 A vast surplus of something like S100,000,000 8 year is being wrung from the industry and enterprise of the country, by war taxes in time of peace. The lately disbanded congress did nothing to reduce this monstrous burden, which would drive almost any other people on earth to revolu- tion. This prodigious annual excess of revenue must either be hoarded in the treasury, as premium for polit- ical piracy, or expended in shaking the best financial system on the globe, by buying up the government bonds on which it is based The recently dispersed congress did nothing to remedy this dangerous condition of affairs.
 Our national tariff, framed for the exigencies ofa mighty four years war, needs revision and readjustment. It IS huge mass of inequalities, incon- slstencies and wrongs. The late worth less congress did nothing to remove defects or correct evils 90 glaring that the wayfaring man, though fool only one size smaller and two shades less hopeless than an average congressman, cannot fail to see them.
 Our country is being deluged with the paupers and criminals, the out casts and outlaws, of every region under heaven. or above the other place. The overhauling and amendment of